This was bitter, and the sulkiness deepened on each rebellious face.
“Write another,” Jean said. “I won’t pass work like that. And this time I must watch you.”
Under this infliction both boys wrote with deliberate slovenliness, and the second copies were rather worse than the first. Billy had recorded that “All is not gold that gliters” in the first; now he stated “Honistey is the best pollicy,” and stuck to the assertion throughout five lines; while Rex scrawled his quickly, and, having made a huge blot in the middle of the page, devoted himself to turning it into a fat-bodied spider by the addition of sundry hairy legs. Jean flushed as she took the books.
“I suppose you’re both seeing how far you can go,” she said. “I don’t know what has come to you both; as a rule you don’t seem to want to behave like little pigs. Well, you’ll write another copy after school. Get the geography books, Billy.”
It was a sultry morning in March, and from the first the day had begun badly. The twins’ alarum-clock had failed to do its duty, and instead of jumping up at five they had slumbered peacefully until Sarah, outwardly amazed, but inwardly rather pleased, had brought tea to their bedsides at half-past six. Sarah considered that they got up far too early, and worked far too much; she chuckled to herself because they had had an extra allowance of sleep with, in the end, tea in bed—as she would willingly have brought it to them every morning. But the twins were horrified at the failure of their programme. For once their cheerfulness failed them, and they may be said to have got out of bed on the wrong side.
Possibly the weather had something to do with it. February had closed in a blaze of still heat, and March showed no signs of bringing better weather. Not in the memory of man had such steady heat been known in the district; the men talked of it when they met in Barrabri, and shook their heads over the near approach of ruin to many. It was “sticky” weather; humid sultriness, not like their usual dry heat; people longed for a breeze, even a hot wind, rather than these endless days when even the lightest of clothing seemed to cling to the prickly skin, and perspiration made it almost impossible to handle a pen or to use a needle.
“I never remember such a season,” Evan Holmes said. “We’re used to decent, clean hot weather here, that nobody minds; but this is like living in a perpetual vapour-bath. Everybody’s temper is getting on edge!”
The nights were not much better. Often, at sundown, clouds rolled up, and growls of thunder were heard, bringing hopes of rain: then it would all disperse, and the still, clammy heat would do its best to make sleep an impossibility. The twins, generally asleep five minutes after they were in bed, found themselves, to their disgust, tossing and turning in unaccustomed wakefulness. It was small wonder if they overslept themselves when the alarum-clock failed to act.
Everything seemed to go wrong that morning—partly because they tried to carry out the programme in full, not realizing that a lost hour and a half takes too much catching. Older people would have shrugged and let some things go, for once; the twins, being young and stiff-necked, refused to do so, would not take time to eat a reasonable breakfast, and, by the time lessons began, were thoroughly on edge.
The boys, too, had had an unfortunate morning. They had been late, and had rushed the cows up to the milking-shed—bringing a sharp word of reproof from Mr. Weston. Then old Strawberry, infuriated by the clustering flies, had kicked just as Rex had almost finished milking her, and had knocked over half a bucket of milk, most of which bespattered Rex. Billy had unfeelingly howled with laughter, and even Mr. Weston had smiled, though he was annoyed at the loss of the milk—milk was getting scarce as the lucerne crop shrank and the remnant of feed in the paddock dwindled. Rex himself had been astonished at the wave of hot anger that swept over him, and at the dull resentment that followed it. He did not generally feel like that, even if things did go awry. Certainly the clerk of the weather was responsible for much that morning.